Kindness

I am often taken back by the varying degrees of empathetical effort expended by those around me in regard to the feelings of others. Most of my life I have been a very off-the-cuff kind of a person. I say what I mean and mean what I say. Rarely do I hold back my opinions and views, and this of course has most adequately labeled me as a heavily voiced, intimidating, and even overbearing individual.

Introspectively, I do care about others and even value their views. I know how fooled our emotions can become in situations and thusly, almost unconsciously at times, negate to value emotions and the feelings of others in my day to day communication. If I were to pick one thing about myself I would change, it would have to include the kindness which I extend to those around me. The saying "kill them with kindness", rings truer and truer to me the older I get.

Maybe kindness is a trait gained over time rather than just having it part of our nature. Most people (myself included) are selfish buggers, and as such, we tend to ignore the sphere outside our personal sphere whenever possible it seems. Having children and being a parent of course tends to root this from our breasts like some plague that needs slaying. You cannot afford to be as selfish after you have children (at least and have any hope of being a good parent, with children that have been taught correctly and will, at some date in the future, start to contribute to society more than just eating, sleeping, and defecating).

So, how does one gain the attribute or characteristic of kindness? What truly is kindness? Why should we or should we not be kind?

A simplistic definition of kindness could be summed up by stating, "Kindness is having the ability to put the needs/emotional well-being/ego/self-esteem of someone else above that of our own, and choosing to do so freely without any compulsory means."

I would venture to claim that most people desire to attain a level of kindness far greater than they now possess, and furthermore, I would also venture to claim that the only way kindness can be achieved is in the doing of kind things. This brings us to service. Service is when we give something of ourselves, whether it is time, money, possessions, or talents, to someone else with no known or desired benefit. This is the highest form of kindness in my view.

When we remove the shackles which accompany the mindset of "What do I get from this?", then we are able to see things outside of ourselves and like my post below, we become objective in our actions, emotions, feelings, and attitude.

The world experiences constant change, and along with that change, there are myriads of people who if they chose to become objective and kind, you would see a lot less suffering, war, poverty, and mankind would achieve a higher level of excellence than we have yet to achieve.

I cannot ever think of a time when kindness is not appropriate. Whether you are talking with a friend, sibling, parent, child, co-worker, relative, or a perfect stranger, it would become us all to step back for just a moment, and ponder on the impact to the person who we are experiencing this moment with and consider their feelings. That very act alone would propel us away from our selfish nature.

Kindness is a choice, it begins with each person and it can either be propagated or destroyed by one single person in any given situation. Let each of us choose the better part by deciding right now to be more kind. You never know, it might just come back tenfold.